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Basicly you just said NVIDIA is ahead. Also there is no good reason why AMD hasn't done what NVIDIA did. Conclusion: NVIDIA is ahead.

If you wanted a system where the kernel is open source, the middle is a big blob and you can run open source applications on top, we already have it. It's called a Mac, and they're much better at it than nVidia is.

Of course AMD can do as nVidia did and make the whole X server into some half-proprietary hybrid but it'd be costly, not open source friendly and most of all way outside what a hardware company should normally do to deliver a driver. If they just wanted to throw a pile of money at it to take the Linux market they could, but then they'd probably also have to go closed source to get an ROI on that investment.

I use nVidias blob but I don't like depending on a blob, and I sure don't want the blobs to grow taking over for more open source functionality. I'd much rather they helped make xserver better so that I don't have to run the blob. Yes, please improve the parts nVidia is overriding but please also keep it open source. I think there's a lot you could help the open source community with without giving away any of the secret sauce...

If you wanted a system where the kernel is open source, the middle is a big blob and you can run open source applications on top, we already have it. It's called a Mac, and they're much better at it than nVidia is.

Of course AMD can do as nVidia did and make the whole X server into some half-proprietary hybrid but it'd be costly, not open source friendly and most of all way outside what a hardware company should normally do to deliver a driver. If they just wanted to throw a pile of money at it to take the Linux market they could, but then they'd probably also have to go closed source to get an ROI on that investment.

I use nVidias blob but I don't like depending on a blob, and I sure don't want the blobs to grow taking over for more open source functionality. I'd much rather they helped make xserver better so that I don't have to run the blob. Yes, please improve the parts nVidia is overriding but please also keep it open source. I think there's a lot you could help the open source community with without giving away any of the secret sauce...

mmm...ok yea. However my ATI 2600XT won't work 100% as it should before who knows when. I think 2010 and even in that year I'm sure it will still have limitations... So you talk about open here and open there. I talk about a customer that works and goes to the mall or wherever, gets 150$ from his pocket and buys an AMD card. Goes home, puts it in and realized he's done a mistake, crappy FGLRX, open source driver that is totally incomplete. Now go tell him about open things.

I am still sure NVIDIA will continue to be number 1 for the Linux operating system for next years. Every 1 step AMD does, NVIDIA does 10. And the open source driver will never be feature-rich or optimized as the NVIDIA blob.

Probably. I doubt that either ATI or NVidia binary drivers will use DRI2. The ATI open source drivers have had DRI2 running for a while, and airlied was spinning gears on a cube using his merged R1xx-R5xx Mesa driver a few days ago, but the memory management code isn't ready to go into the kernel yet. Same goes for Nouveau -- they've also been running on DRI2 for a while but it was built over TTM just like the radeon code.

Of course AMD can do as nVidia did and make the whole X server into some half-proprietary hybrid but it'd be costly, not open source friendly and most of all way outside what a hardware company should normally do to deliver a driver.

You seem to be under the impression that NVIDIA put forth a lot of effort to replace all those X bits. The reality is that they replaced all those X bits because it resulted in less effort (not more) since they already had all those replacement bits working for the most part. It's really just a port of their Windows GL driver with the minimum amount of glue put in place to get it working.

So far as fglrx being behind... who cares? I'd rather AMD put what resources they can into the Open Source development rather than trying to keep the stupid blob on the cutting edge. NVIDIA puts all of their Linux devs (like 3 of them, tops, iirc) on the proprietary blob, so it's rather natural that they manage to keep up faster (although they have still lagged a LOT many times before.... I can't count how many times I've had to reinstall older X server packages on distros when I was stuck using NVIDIA's driver).

So far as fglrx being behind... who cares? I'd rather AMD put what resources they can into the Open Source development rather than trying to keep the stupid blob on the cutting edge. NVIDIA puts all of their Linux devs (like 3 of them, tops, iirc) on the proprietary blob, so it's rather natural that they manage to keep up faster (although they have still lagged a LOT many times before.... I can't count how many times I've had to reinstall older X server packages on distros when I was stuck using NVIDIA's driver).

I completely agree. I used nvidia cards for few years and nvidia closed blob were an only reason why my Linux box crashed sometimes. I'm very happy AMD/Ati r500 card owner now. Things which has the most priority for me work perfectly - compiz, video playback, desktop is very smooth now, I can play some 3D games too. I get rid of binary and proprietary crap from my system at last.